In his closing address at the Synod of Bishops on the Family, Pope Francis said the meeting of Church leaders was never intended to solve all the problems that afflict modern families. The Synod, he said, was a forum to study the family and assess its many challenges “fearlessly, without burying our heads in the sand.”

For several decades a cornerstone of the work undertaken by the religious order founded in India by Mother Teresa was finding safe homes for orphaned children. Thousands of destitute and abandoned children have met loving parents through adoptions arranged by the Missionaries of Charity.

Pope Francis has energized debate about the threat to the planet’s natural environment. But now he faces an even greater challenge — mobilizing Catholics and society in general to tackle the man-made threat to the bedrock of our social environment, the family.

To be a Christian in Cuba means being subjected to state surveillance, discrimination, harassment and sometimes arrest. It also means being a casualty of the punishing U.S. trade embargo that inflicts unjust suffering on all Cubans.

In 1741 Pope Benedict XIV was concerned that some bishops were dissolving marriages too freely so he established stringent protocols to govern annulments. Those canon laws remained virtually unchanged through 18 papacies until now, 274 years later, when they are being rewritten by a Pope who is affixing his stamp of mercy on a process that is often long, expensive and painful.

Ontario and several other provinces are following the federal government’s lead in assembling “expert” panels to research and make recommendations during a mad dash to transform Canada into a nation that permits doctors to kill selected patients or help these patients kill themselves.

An understandable reaction to an early August federal election call for an Oct. 19 vote is to declare a pox on all their houses and turn deaf ears to such an excruciatingly long campaign. Eleven weeks of insincere promises and attack ads. Who needs their summer sun darkened by those black clouds?